about the project ‘Notion Nanny’ is a collaborative touring project by New York-based artist Allison Smith. Smith travels through rural and urban districts, searching for traditional skills and revolutionary dialogues about art and crafts. Through a series of residencies and exchanges, Smith builds a temporary guild, a platform for discussion, and a sculptural installation, which together form the basis for a cumulative travelling exhibition making stops in Cumbria, London, Shropshire, and eventually, the United States.

about artist and participants As a part of the project, Smith has created a peddler doll (or ‘notion nanny’), a life-size doll depicting a street vendor – looking like Smith herself. Her basket is filled with wares made by Smith, in collaboration with local artisans, tradesmen, and craftspeople she meets along the way.

Distributing handbills “door-to-door” and making contacts through word-of-mouth, Smith, as Notion Nanny, contacts the traditional makers, speaking with them about their relationship to political and social histories of making. Smith acts together with the peddler doll, thus emphasizing and questioning existing ideas about art and craft in contemporary life.